This from ZDNet:
A new website has been launched this month by the Eychaner Foundation, in the hopes that it will become a valuable tool to help tackle the problem of bullying.
ReportbullyingIowa.com takes reports submitted by students, parents and staff, and sends them to an ‘appropriate person in your school district’. The information is sent via email and US Postal mail, with an additional copy sent to the email inbox of the one reporting the incident.
By filling in the incident form on the website, you are able to specify the school and its district, the date and type of incident — for example, student to student or student to staff — and input information on the complainants.
You are also able to specify what factors the incident was based on, such as age, colour, sex, disabilities or socioeconomic status.
After describing the incident, the reporter is required to input their status, whether student, teacher or parent, contact details and address.
The website’s privacy policy is designed to ensure reports remain anonymous. According to the policy, no personal identifiable information is revealed in either the preliminary reports sent to school districts, or the annual reports that are sent to the Iowa legislature.
The Des Moines non-profit group that is sponsoring the website launch said that its goal is to ‘promote tolerance and nondiscrimination’...
4 comments:
Anonymous?!?!
THere is your problem right there. How do we expect there to be large scale change when individuals are not only unwilling to intervene in a bullying situation but aren't even expected to validate their own identity.
SOunds like school administrators are going to be chasing their tales trying to play Dick Tracy based upon information which may or not be accurate or even true.
If we are going to live in a culture where we aren't going to even expect people to take responsibility for identifying themselves, how in the world are we to expect schools to address this issue?
"Anonymous?!?!
There is your problem right there."
: )
As I typed it, I realized the irony of my posting identity, but I am not seeking an act or response by you with the expectation that you investigate and engage in actions to ensure mine or a classmate's safety or social well being.
This matter of bullying has snowballed into something which has almost infinite applications and for which student electronic media has only caused even greater confusion and frustration for educators. (What use to be a prank phone call at night from one home to another home of a classmate or a name calling round across the neighborhood fences between a couple of kids which was never an issue brought to the principal but handled at home, has now become this consuming beast which involves special legislation, school investigation and police intervention and pointless documentation.
Apparently, just like all students will be proficient in all areas of study, they will also not be exposed to negative social interactions with classmates. Like for so many students for whom schools are now expected to cloth, feed, transport, counsel and even provide medical care, we are now suppose to protect them from insensative comments made by classmate. (I know it is hard to believe that kids would ever say something mean or sarcastic.)
It would seem that we may be creating "educational" institutions which are actually unpreparing students for the world they will be expected to function after graduation: A world in which, unfortunately, people can be quite rude and indifferent to you, no one provides you with subsistance needs for free and the organizations for whom you serve only care if you can get the job done according to their own parameters, not based on your individual inabilities or needs.
Not saying we should adopt a sink or swim mentality, but all these other Asian and northern European countries many of our leaders are so worried about out scoring us on standardized exams don't seem to be as obsessed with this issue as we are in America. Not sure if they are indifferent, not seeing the same behaviors in their schools or what, but I don't see how I can ever be an instructional leader if I have to spend an hour and a half of my day talking to the parents of a "bullied child" and then speaking to at least three students only to discover that one girl told another that she did not like the sweater she was wearing.
But I do hope you spend every minute of every day modeling and teaching your students that bullying is hurtful and unproductive and that, in your classroom, it will not be tolerated.
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